George Orwell - his craft and his challenge

 My father had a huge set of Encyclopedia Britannica which travelled the world with us.  I remember as a child fondling the huge black volumes of which there seemed to be dozens and later mastering the two books of indexes which helped you to find the information you sought.  I was awestruck that there was so much to learn from these massive bound books.  This was the world before the internet and I felt especially blessed that our home housed such a treasure-trove.  It did not matter what homework was given by teachers, this set of encyclopedias provided the gold standard information on any topic.  

Later, as a teacher, when a student of mine quoted Wikipedia or some Facebook posting in their assignments I would sigh in vain that now the information highway was so full of nonsense it seemed miseducation was the goal, not truth.  Then, years later helping students with their masters and Ph.D. thesis I realised this highest form of education was just endless repetition of the knowledge of others changed slightly to avoid the cry of plagiarism.  Okay, the sources used were peer-reviewed journals and much sounder than a web posting but this puerile packaging and sharing of the knowledge of others seemed to have become the new gold standard.  That feels wrong for so many reasons and I like this quote which gives a different definition and highlights some of the flaws of this particular knowledge system.

“Knowledge is a light which God casteth into the heart of whomsoever He willeth.” It is this kind of knowledge which is and hath ever been praiseworthy, and not the limited knowledge that hath sprung forth from veiled and obscured minds. This limited knowledge they even stealthily borrow one from the other, and vainly pride themselves therein!"

Bahá’u’lláh

When visiting my new baby granddaughter in England I wandered into an old graveyard in a beautiful hamlet outside Oxford and discovered the grave of George Orwell, one of my Dad's favourite authors.  Weeks later I wanted to read more about this writer and turned to the once so reliable online Encyclopedia Britannica as my source.  Expecting a balanced account of this brilliant writer I found myself disturbed by the tone of this particular entry.  Let me quote a few of the offending sections,

"He was born in Bengal, into the class of sahibs. His father was a minor British official in the Indian civil service; his mother, of French extraction, was the daughter of an unsuccessful teak merchant in Burma (Myanmar)."

Exactly who cares if his father was a minor official and why does the business success or failings of George Orwell's maternal grandfather reflect on the writer?  Does this not say more about the reviewer and their perspective of what is considered valuable?  If he had come from a long line of wealthy slave transportation businessmen with vast inherited estates would this reflect better on George Orwell?

 "Their attitudes were those of the “landless gentry,” ... lower-middle-class people whose pretensions to social status had little relation to their income."

Oh dear, does anyone else feel that this statement is strangely disturbing? 

 "Orwell was thus brought up in an atmosphere of impoverished snobbery."

Here one wants to ask the person constructing this piece, is this meant to be the snobbery George Orwell experienced as a result of being poor?  In which case perhaps a different phraseology would be appropriate?

 "After returning with his parents to England, he was sent in 1911 to a preparatory boarding school on the Sussex coast, where he was distinguished among the other boys by his poverty and his intellectual brilliance." 

I have no problems with the young George Orwell being distinguished by the brilliance of his mind. However, I resent the implications that his being poor made him distinguished in some fashion.  Perhaps it would have been better to say that all the other students around him in the school were exceedingly rich.

"He grew up a morose, withdrawn, eccentric boy, and he was later to tell of the miseries of those years in his posthumously published autobiographical essay, Such, Such Were the Joys (1953)."

Here is an extract, from George himself, in that very essay, which tells the first few weeks of being sent to a private boarding school for the first time.

“Soon after I arrived ... I began wetting my bed. I was now aged eight, so that this was a reversion to a habit which I must have grown out of at least four years earlier. Nowadays, I believe, bed-wetting in such circumstances is taken for granted. It is a normal reaction in children who have been removed from their homes to a strange place. In those days, however, it was looked on as a disgusting crime which the child committed on purpose and for which the proper cure was a beating.”

And beatings were given regularly and harshly in this establishment at first by means of a riding crop, but when this broke during a harsh thrashing, a more sturdy implement took its place.  It was also clear to George at this very young age that those whose families were rich did not receive the same level of brutality.  Even the treatment meted out by older boys was cruel and as George himself sadly pointed out, "Against no matter what degree of bullying you had no redress." Little wonder then in this environment George became sad, uncommunicative, and was regarded as unconventional by others.

George won two scholarships to elite public schools, Wellington and Eton, not due to his birthright or family wealth but as a result of his abilities.  Despite his brilliance, he chose not to go on to university but instead led a full life enriched with experiences he would later use in his writing. My favourite books of George Orwell are Animal Farm, 1984 and Down and Out in Paris and London.  He is an insightful and brilliant writer whose perspectives need to be more widely embraced.  Poverty is never viewed the same way after reading the last of these books and 1984’s is a powerful prophetic piece.  Animal Farm is one of the most hard-hitting political storytelling pieces and my admiration of the character Boxer lingered from childhood to adulthood.  

It took me a long while to find Geroge Orwell’s grave because he did not use his pen name but his own given name Eric Arthur Blair on the gravestone.  Orwell’s friend, a member of the Astor family, had helped provide George Orwell the privacy he needed to finish his last book 1984 on the remote Scottish island of Jura. This editor professed great admiration for Orwell's "absolute straightforwardness, his honesty and his decency" and insisted that on his own death he would be buried under an equally simple gravestone in a plot just beside his friend.   Somehow as a writer, George Orwell was able to convey a humanity and sensitivity that embeded within it the knowledge he had won from his own life experiences.  These were not stolen from someone else but crafted by a brilliant mind from all that he had observed and magically challenges those that read it.  

Love of humanity not love of nationality

It is disheartening to see the rise of racism across Europe.  The tide of illegal immigrants flocking to its shores, combined with an economic downturn have prompted the rise of a growing nationalism and a swing to the political right.  I lived in Rhodes for almost a decade and was devastated by the common occurrence of boats filled with refugees sinking as they made their way across into Europe from Turkey.  Searching for a new life and fleeing impossible conditions these hopefuls were instead washed ashore on holiday islands, their dead bodies bloated and distorted. 

Now, I am living on Malta the fleeing refugees keep coming, this time from Africa and again holiday islands are the first piece of Europe encountered by the fleeing masses.   You used to read in history about when a civilisation fell it was customary for its men to be slaughtered and its women and children sold into slavery.  It seemed barbaric and inhuman that this was so common an occurrence in our history.  But living in Rhodes, during the fall of the Soviet Union, I was to learn a new lesson in modern forms of the same.  Russian women worked on the island as cleaners and sent their money home to their families in Russia.  Often these women were qualified workers in Russia but had not been paid and so had fled to find income to support their children.  They work so hard these women and they don’t complain.  Whatever disaster unfolds they just buckle down and try a little harder.  Hardship strengthens you, they say.   It felt horrific to see a kind of modern slavery of sorts and to sense their vulnerability. 

Here, on Malta the economy is good and yet already a weariness of this tide of refugees is in evidence.  In Greece, where the economy is far from healthy, the rise of the right wing extremist party has brought violence onto the street against foreigners.  It is not just the newly arrived that are targeted.  A friend of mine, who has lived in Greece for many decades, as an eye doctor was targeted by racist thugs in the town where he lives.  I remember using his services when one of my young sons had something painful in his eye at a summer school, we were both attending in northern Greece.  The doctor delicately rolled back the eyelid and blew, the obstruction was cleared and my son’s relief was immediate.  To think that this decent man was beaten so badly that he is on crutches defies belief.  When I saw his photograph after the attack I wept.  Both at the pain and suffering he endured and at the stupidity of those who do such things to other human beings. 

Most people would not attack foreigners in their midst but many will come out with racist comments that fuel the actions of the ignorant in our society.  When a tide of racism is on the increase one hopes that those who believe in a better society stand firm in their principles.  We so often look back to Nazi actions and celebrate those who protected the Jews and went against the tide of public opinion around them.  Perhaps, people will look back at these days we live in now and speak of those who knew how to keep grounded in their love of humanity, despite the challenges and confusion.

Anxiously concerned with the needs of the age

Yesterday while walking through Valletta, Malta I came across a procession.  Lead by a pipe band it made its way through the narrow streets of the old city.  A group of children in long white cassocks followed and then adults with dramatic gowns and the Maltese emblem emblazoned on each shoulder.  Following them came a group of men struggling under the weight of a huge wooden structure carrying a cross and other figures.  Their walk was peculiar with a sideways sway to every step forward.  Then as they grew closer I saw the strain on their faces and began to appreciate the weight they were carrying.  At the corner of a street they lowered their burden and huge swollen patches on their shoulders were evident.  Not red patches but massive protrusions the size of two huge fists.  They looked sore beyond belief and suddenly the spectacle had ceased to hold any appeal.  It reminded me of the followers who scourge themselves for religious reasons.  I felt my heart sink, much as I tried and did admire the tenacity of their devotion.  It just seems to be that in this day our devotion much surely be shown in service to our fellow humans not in such practices.  Here on Malta there is a 80-year-old Franciscan priest who has been running a shelter for the refugees fleeing to Europe for forty years.  Being on the edge of Europe, people in makeshift boats head across the Mediterranean to find sanctuary and refuge.  The centre called the Peace Laboratory provides an oasis of calm and security to those who have nothing.  At a time when so many want to make their mark on the world, wouldn’t it be good if many more chose to serve humanity and became anxiously concerned with the needs of the age we live in.